On Topic Discussion Alaskan Native Tribes Identify as Eskimos in Contrast to Native Populations in Greenland and Canada

[NotHardUp1]

It's interesting how the pattern is the same whether it's hillbillies, low-landers, crackers, swamp rats or Indians.

If you haven't read the Vance book, you would probably find it a good read.

Quite a few of the Tribes found themselves in bad deals with casino corporations. They also found people coming out of the woodwork claiming Indian relatives.

Things are beginning to change, though. The Tribes with good leadership are re-investing the money into schools and scholarships for higher education. They want the kids to come back to the reservation with business educations and skills so that they can be better stewards of the funds from the casinos and Tribe-owned businesses.

Two things. The cycle of poverty afflicts all impoverished groups regardless of ethnicity. If it's inappropriate to use niggers, spics, and kykes in making social group references, it would seem just as inappropriate to use terms such as hillbillies, swamp rats, and crackers, which are just as derogatory. Whereas there have been reality shows where some celebrity "swamp rats" adopt the term, that can't really be said to be a broader pattern with hillbilly and cracker, which unlike "Indian," is not the preferred term by the subject subpopulation.

Second, the continuing problem with Native American population groups is that they do not reinvest in enough businesses at home OTHER than the casinos. The casinos are not just filled with tourists, but with tribe members, fueling gambling addictions, alcohol and tobacco use, and low wage non-union jobs. The tribes SHOULD be creating jobs at home in productive and positive industries so that their university educated youth return to a home where they can stay instead of leave to an urban area to use those skills.

 

[KaraBulut]

Two things. The cycle of poverty afflicts all impoverished groups regardless of ethnicity. If it's inappropriate to use niggers, spics, and kykes in making social group references, it would seem just as inappropriate to use terms such as hillbillies, swamp rats, and crackers, which are just as derogatory.

I chose those particular terms because they are historical terms that were used contemporaneously and have a particular historical context. I should have put them in quotes and mentioned that they are historical terms that date back to the beginning of the United States.

So, here are the references if you're interested in the background story of where those terms actually came from historically:
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Nancy Isenberg, 2017)
White Trash: Race and Class in America (Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, 1997)
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (Charles Mann, 2012)

I'd recommend the Isenberg book- it has a lot of really good historical information about what the colonial period was like at the very beginning and why the issues from 400 years ago about class and race are still with us today. It will also dispel a lot of the watered-down history that you may have learned in junior high and high school.

In particular, both the Isenberg and Wray books discuss something that most people aren't aware of: that England used portions of the United States as a penal colony. If you committed what would, today, be a minor crime like petty theft, they would ship you to the US to serve your sentence of hard labor. Orphans were taken off the street and shipped to the US. Other poor people were either put into the Navy or sold as indentured servants to wealthy people in the Colonies. The European issues with trans-generational poverty were exported to the US and still with us today.

After you've read the Isenberg book, you might question you own belief that "The cycle of poverty afflicts all impoverished groups regardless of ethnicity".

A lot modern issues in Native American groups had their origin in the settlement of the New World. The history books focus on 1492, the year that Columbus "sailed the ocean blue". What the Mann book covers is what happened to the indigenous people of the Americas and their c
ulture after the Europeans started their conquests in the Americas. It's also a very good read.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Yes, I've read articles on the history of such terms, but I also saw definitions that reaffirmed that they are often largely perceived as bigoted and/or racist in modern use, and by reputable online dictionaries.

And the point remains about poverty's cycle and its tendency to remain unbroken when reinforced by overly strong family ties and the tendency to not leave one's poor community. It's true of whites in rural Kentucky, black in urban ghettos, Indians in pueblos, or Cajuns in back swamps in Louisiana.

 

[KaraBulut]

Second, the continuing problem with Native American population groups is that they do not reinvest in enough businesses at home OTHER than the casinos. The casinos are not just filled with tourists, but with tribe members, fueling gambling addictions, alcohol and tobacco use, and low wage non-union jobs. The tribes SHOULD be creating jobs at home in productive and positive industries so that their university educated youth return to a home where they can stay instead of leave to an urban area to use those skills.

Again, caution- the Native American groups should not be viewed as "one" when in fact, they have always been individual cultural groups with overlapping issues. If you look at the Sioux in the upper midwest, you might believe that the statement that you made is true of all Tribes. Nothing could be further from the truth- other groups like the Morongo and the Seminole have very different experiences.

There were some very good Congressional hearings in 2017 about what is going on with "American Indian/Native Alaskan" programs. The testimony from William Harris was particularly interesting. The Catawba are one of those groups that have begun the process of turning around their business and re-investment strategies. His statement to the Congress can be found here.

If you're interested in another success story, here's a Forbes article about the business interests of the Seminole tribes in Georgia and Florida.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Your caution is noted but not needed, except perhaps by some reader, such as you, who would impute such a generalization. I used the term "groups" to distinguish them as not monolithic.

No, I don't make the case that the poverty cycle is inextricably linked to all Native tribes, or that they all share the same downward spiral.

I argue that the ones that are on the downward spiral DO share a lot of the same patterns, just as I commented that there are social similarities between ghettos, pueblos, rural coal mining towns, and others.

The casino argument certainly cannot speak to poverty cycles in Alaska. There aren't any casinos there, and rural villages are suffering from the patterns discussed, sans casinos. However, now that I Google it, I had forgotten about the crazy bingo and pull tab phenomena. They certainly don't help.

But I wouldn't attribute the spirals to gambling alone anyway. It's the combination of factors. Just like a real tornado isn't made simply of wind, but wind under very specific conditions.

It would be interesting and informative to find a book or website that shows current demographic data about the relative number of tribes that have been able to raise their average household incomes above poverty levels, and how many households each has tracked.

By the way, I think I should add that I had gay friends in New Mexico who were tribe members, with one being a member of JUB. In Alaska, I worked as an employee of a tribe, so I don't see all tribes as clones, nor do I view Natives as either inferior or dislikeable in their cultures.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

But I wouldn't attribute the spirals to gambling alone anyway. It's the combination of factors. Just like a real tornado isn't made simply of wind, but wind under very specific conditions.

ergo if it's true in meteorological phenomenon it must be true in life?

 

[frankfrank]

The book with the title "White Trash" talks about a 400-year history???

That they would choose that specific term, implies that the term used to describe such history may also be centuries old.

I always thought it originated during "the War" (WWII) or possibly later than that. (OK, yeah, I know, I could look it up. Google is my friend.)

 

[KaraBulut]

The book with the title "White Trash" talks about a 400-year history???

It's a fascinating book. Some of the historical references in the book are eye-opening. The earliest references refer to "waste people" or draw parallels to inferior breeding stock in animals.

"The year 1776 is a false starting point for any consideration of American conditions. Independence did not magically erase the British class system, nor did it root out long-entrenched beliefs about poverty and the willful exploitation of human labor. An unfavored population, widely thought of as waster of "rubbish", remained disposable indeed well into modern times."